New Homeless Shelters In Action?

    On March 8th 2023 Mayor Ted Wheeler held a news conferences announcing his plan to open a group of new homeless shelters. During this new conference the Mayor discusses that homelessness in our city has increase by 50% from 2019-2022. What people may not know is that while substance abuse, mental illnesses and drug use may be a cause of homelessness, the main issue and reason is actually the lack of affordable housing. While the end goal is to increase the numbers of affordable housing in the Portland area, the city council has $27 million set aside specifically for these temporary shelters will be the start of this transition. 

    The plan for these shelters are to provide, safe, secure and hygienic places. There will be 100 tents for up to 150 people. They will get two meals a day with snacks, access to laundry, storage, wifi, trash and hazardous waste removal, pet areas and more. There is no alcohol or drugs, cooking or fires allowed and all weapons will be checked at the entrance of the property. While it has not been confirmed yet, Security for these shelters will most likely be staffed by Urban Alchemy non-profit. There hasn’t been any say in locations for these shelters as of now. The Mayor does state that there will be neighborhood and community meetings for the areas located near these shelters.With that being said, there is a possibility of the first shelter being located at 1490 SE Gideon Street between the Brooklyn and Hosford-Abernathy neighborhoods.

    While in theory these sound like a great start, we still don’t have any dates in line. Along with that, the issues of drug and substance use are nowhere near to being fixed. I fear the rules will limit the number of people who will take advantage of these shelters, as well as the safety for the neighborhoods they choose for these shelters. I have hope that this can be the start to the change in decreasing our homelessness numbers, but without any dates or deadlines I still fear there will be more action needed in order to fix this problem.

For more information on this topic you can go to https://www.kptv.com/2023/03/08/wheeler-details-plan-eliminate-unsanctioned-camping-portland/ for the article or to watch the video of the news conference. 
OR
This website goes in more depth on this topic which is also linked in the article above. 
https://www.portland.gov/wheeler/shelter-sites
The image is also from the first link above.